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I’m really not sure to be honest. I’m not against hunting. I love meat, I think herds need to be thinned to maintain population control and I think everyone should learn how to provide for themselves and their families. I personally have an over affection for animals and I definately got that from my mother. As insane as it may make me sound, I’d rather see a human suffer than an animal. I mean most of the time humans can at least voice thier pain or opinions on a matter, where animals have to just take the pain and suffering we give them.
Either way, my biggest problem is seeing the suffering from the point of the ‘hit shot’ to the point where they actually pass. ie. the suffering part. Even the best layed shot from a hunter can leave an animal for minutes to hours in pain. Again, ‘either way’, I’m seriously contemplating picking up the sport for the reasons I mentioned above. You can store away as many seeds as you wish and still starve to death waiting for your stuff to actually grow and produce it’s fruit/vegetables.
I was recently having a conversation with the wife about preperation for the ‘Zombie Apocalypse’ and she mentioned we needed some silent weapons to not draw attention from the other ‘zombies’ when used. We have a lot of guns but we all know zombies are attracted to loud sounds and we’d not want to be overrun from a horde while eliminating a single zombie. She mentioned getting a bow and I instantly agreed. "I need a bow!"
After some research and some more research, then some more thought and research, I decided to shop and buy a bow. I picked up a PSE compound off of craigslist. I need to sight it in and adjust the weight before I take it out for a trial run but, I’m quite elated about it.
Back to the hunting. While thinking this through, I think I’d actually want to hunt with it. I strongly believe it takes more skill and is more of a challenge to hunt with a bow so maybe thats the appeal for me. I wont be hunting soon with it of course, it’s something I’d definately want to become really REALLY good at before I attempt to take a deer. I’d want to make sure I had a high chance of a kill shot to prevent unneeded suffering.
In the meantime I’ll practice on targets before I practice on deer in order to be prepared for the walking dead.
- Jason
For those that have followed this site for a while, you know that I have a tendency to find something new that I like and jump into it both feet simultaneously. Rarely do I ‘dilly dally’ with a hobby. Whether its something I do for a short time or a long time, I’m fully ‘into’ it. Thats just how I do things.
I’ve recently found something new and once again, I’ve jumped right in as usual, loving every minute of it. What is it this time? It’s the new addictive habit slowly taking over the world. It assists you in quitting one nasty habit and gives you something else to do in it’s place. What I’m talking about is ‘vaping’.
Vaping is the term coined with the new e-cigarette phemonenon. Instead of smoking your normal cigarette you use the e-cigerette as a new form of putting nicotine into your body. The mechanics are the same but the similarities stop there. What you inhale/exhale from this device is a waterlike vapor so all complaints of ‘second hand’ smoke are gone. The sooty smell of the smoke is gone so you’re not left smelling like an ashtray (or tasing like one to your significant other). Of all of the toxic ingredients of the cigarettes people smoke, the nicotine is the least of the danger a lot of the time. (Thats my opinion, not science btw.) When you ‘vape’ you’re no longer inhaling all of the carcinogens, tars, chemicals added during the creation process, pesticides added during the tobacco growth, smoke (in general).
Now let me tell you why I do it.
I quite smoking nearly 3 years ago. I traded one gross habit for another, I still got my nicotine but in the form of Skoal. I didn’t quit smoking for the health or cost reasons of it, if you remember, but for politics. Well, we all know that smoking will slowly kill you and that, although different, dipping is no better. Some say worse…. I was slowly coming to the realization that I needed to quit dipping because it was beginning to wear on my gumline and teeth. I wasn’t looking for a replacement but one day while stopping in the new local e-cig store to let the wife pick up a few things, I noticed a couple things that I wanted to inquire about.
I had tried e-cigs before and thought they were pretty cool but didn’t quite give me the ‘oooomph’ that I would need to trade off. Actually upon originally trying them, I wasn’t considering dropping my dipping habit yet. You see dipping gives you a nice rush of nicotine and it also stays consistent throughout the duration of the time it’s in. The amount of nicotine in your average ‘dip’ is significantly higher than just smoking a cigarette and your average e-cig generally provides a delivered dose close to what a light cigarette may give you… Then I found Volcano.
Volcano is an e-cig manufacturer based out of Hawaii and from what I’ve learned over the last month or so, one of, if not THE highest quality ones out there. My personal experience is solely based on my interactions with the local store in downtown Raleigh and that is where part II will begin.
(to be continued)
I’ve been infatuated with Minecraft ever since I started playing a little over a month ago. The weekend I began playing there were some issues where we could not get online and I didn’t quite understand things as well as I do now so I let it pass as a irrelevant aggrivation. This past weekend the same issue arose and this time it really did aggrivate me.
The problem that arose that I am talking about is the inability to log on to a private server that is hosted by a friend. So here’s the true layout of the problem and lets see if you can understand my frustration. I log into Minecraft’s interface with a name and password that is set up upon buying an account. Then a list of my servers comes up. I choose the server that shows online but fail logging in. Figure out my frustration? No? Well here goes. I’ve already authenticated once upon starting the game interface up to verify my username/password is a paid/valid account. At this point I should be able to play wherever I wish. Apparently Minecraft also needs to authenticate every time I log into an individual server. I also will reiterate that these ‘servers’ are private and no longer should I be tied to Notch’s watchful eyes.
The problem with all of this is apparently during weekends the authentication server gets overloaded or has problems processing the larger volumes of users…. or they just flat out aren’t balanced in a way so that if one crashes another picks up the slack. (Bad DR planning) This alone makes me question why I need to validate per server. Yes, yes, I understand that this is a way for Notch n Co. to assist preventing additional piracy but until they get a better server architecture layout for balancing and DR, frankly I think this 2nd level of authentication is a bad deal. (Note: This is an assumption based on mere observation, not knowing their layout verbatim) Now I am not privy to the budget of the company but I know at $15-$20 per game and over (i believe, not gonna go double check) 10 million users(?) AND giving that even half of those are given away for whatever reason…. Shoot, I’ll go so far as to say only 2.5 million of those accounts were paid…. and I’ll even average it out to $10 per account instead of the $20 I paid… Holy sheetz! Thats 25 million dollars. 25 million dollars can’t buy you stability to only authenticate users? It’s not like you’re actually hosting the game.
To continue my discussion further…. A room full of people wanting to log on to a server that I ‘own’ per se and cannot because the middle man is irresponsible is severly aggrivating. Even more so since I work in the IT industry and deal with architecture and DR plans daily. Doing a little research I found a way for us to play. It opens our server up a little for ‘hacked’ accounts but the risk there is pretty moot overall.
The secret? No secret but just not well advertised is to change a setting on your private server’s .properties file.
Within the server.properties there is a setting labeled:
online-mode=
(note that this setting is not always populated in the config file. If this is the case on your server, simply add it.)
True = require Notch’s extra authentication
False = Happiness mode because your day will not be ruined due to Notch n Co.’s poor planning.
So simply add: online-mode=false to your server and all should be well to bypass this problem.
Long story short. I am a fan of Notch and think the man is a genius in his own… and in no shape form or fashion condone piracy or cracking the game’s client (that works with this bypass) however until this problem is fixed, I will personally use this to keep my gaming community happy.
Tags: minecraft, bypass, authentication, server, online-mode, notch, error
My name is Jason Roberson and I am an addict. What now you ask? Only the most simple low quality highly addictive game ever!
Months ago during a visit at a friends hows I noticed he was playing a game called Minecraft. It didn’t really look appealing to me at all. He showed me around a bit but for the most part I was only really interested in us firing up the ole’ Starcraft launcher and heading on into oblivion for the weekend. However, a couple weeks ago when we decided once again to have a gaming weekend, he was unfortunate enough on day 2 to blow his power supply. While he was installing Starcraft onto his wife’s machine got bored and clicked on this little brown and green icon labeled ‘Minecraft’. I spent a few minutes tinkering around and he decided to join me from his wife’s machine in the meantime. 24 hours later with maybe 15 of those hours playing minecraft straight through…. I purchased an account and have been full steam ever since.
For those of you into high intense quality graphics and high level rendering of cut scenes and animations…. this game is not for you. This game does however offer me something that I tend to enjoy in real life as well as many other games in the past. Gathering. When I started my first MMO back on SWG, my favorite thing to do was to set up the mineral extractors and collect minerals. Sad? Probably but it was just fun. Even in WoW I had the tendency to collect and collect and only spend when I was grinding and had to use those materials. The first several days I spent most of my time collecting stone, iron, gold, diomonds, dirt, etc. I let my OCD get the best of me and spent an even larger amount of time making every hole and cavern symmetrical. Sad? Definately. Then a week or so went by and I decided to really get into the building aspect. I begun making a huge castle that I thought would be so impressive that my friends would see it and stand in awe. Well I did receive a comment or two while I was building it but after looking around online at other people’s designs, I realized my castle was not huge.
Starting Monday September 26th. I decided to leave my castle behind as maybe a HQ of some sort and went to find a nice new plot of land. A new area where I had room to expand since I was currently was sharing a penninsula with my buddy and had little room to grow into my new vision of castle grandeur. I found a location not too far away and begun landscaping. My walls alone will be grand enough to see for miles…. and I havent done anything but plan the walls…. Hell… the wall’s height alone is higher than my last castle for the most part. *snicker*
I think for now I may start a new section of this site for my Minecraft adventures….. And document my new home’s construction….
Who knows… maybe I’ll even turn all of you into Minecraft Drones as well….
- Jason
Recently my company sent me to the RH124 class for Red Hat Enterprise Linux. For the most part it was a ‘yawner’ because it was 1) GUI driven and I’ve avoided Linux GUI for so long (mainly because when I first started working with Linux GUI was all but useless) and 2) it was 90% based on things I already knew. I needed to take it as a prereq for RH135 so I took advantage of it either way. The class was hosted at Red Hat headquarters in Raleigh which definately was like a sort of ‘Holy Grail’ location for me. (Also a side note to avoiding the GUI is that most of the time as a SA, you will be in a remote shell window and not confronted with a GUI. Most Admins turn GUI off to save resources [Microsoft is just now catching on to this concept with Windows 2008 Server] and also if the GUI goes kaput… you can still do your job and work around it until you can get it back online.)
Flash forward to present and I find myself attending the RH135 class. This is the class of commandline driven System Administration of RHEL (Red Hat Enterprise Linux) and a lot more advanced than the prereq class. With 135 there is an included exam for RHCSA certification which was my goal the entire time. The exam is on Friday and I’m hoping to do well. 
My predecessor at work was our #1 Linux guy after he was sent off to obtain certification when we began using RHEL for one of our applications that he was primary support for. Since he has now left the organization and I’ve been handed his system/s, I’ve had to rely on my years of Linux (self taught) knowledge to scathe by. I’m not a complete ‘n00b’ at Linux being that I’ve used it on/off since the late 90′s but I’ve only learned what was needed to do what ‘I’ needed to do. I can run web servers, mysql servers, etc. but to maintain production enterprise systems for a large organization I felt the need to get a little ‘official’ training under my belt.
I have to say. I knew a decent amount prior to this class but I’ve learned just how far Linux has come over the last decade. I’m amazed at how replacable Windows is now and how easily it can be accomplished. The scaleability of Linux vs. Windows is incredible and the things Linux can do easily that requires a LOT of ‘finagling’ in Microsoft world is an eye opener even for someone like me who already knew about some of it.
I definately plan on spending some time pouring the Kool-Aid into each one of your glasses over the next ‘X’ days/weeks/months but for now all I can say is if you’re even remotely contemplating doing anything with Linux…. definately give it a shot!
- Jason
Well, Kind of a new plan. I still have the good ole’ habit of abandoning this place because I stay too busy with all the new things I have to keep myself involved in for whatever reason at one time or another. Nevertheless (<– my most abused word lately), my latest point of interest that I’ve thrown myself into is actually beneficial in every aspect. Curious yet? I figured as much. I finally decided actually DIET. No, I’m not on ‘Jenny Craig’ or ‘Weight Watchers’ or any other shop around diet plan. I’ve collected enough common sense information and have decided to do the ‘Jason Diet’. No, this is not some new fangled, new aged crazy crash diet. This is basically a diet at it’s simplest form that most people seem to have forgotten…. <top secret> and Discipline.
I do not track Carbs, Sodium, Vitamins, Fats, Trans Fats, Glucose, blah blah blah… or any other sophisticated sounding words. I track 1 thing. Waaaaaait for itttttt. Waaaaaait for ittttt. Calories. YES! Calories! <not so top secret anymore is it?> Remember those? My diet plan is simple and there are a few more parts that come into play over all to assist with the diet (which I will get to) but overall. The only thing I pay attention to day and night is my calorie intake for the day.
Calories are simple. (yes yes I know there are also ‘calories from fat’) but we’re not going there just yet. The goal of this diet is pretty simple. Take in less calories in a day/week than you actually burn. Your body burns calories just to operate normally (BMR) as well as everything you do all day/night. So you basically figure what you burn in a day and take in less than that magic number. I will get to showing you how to calculate this since I know you are oh so interested. Some nutritionist may come in here and say "Jason! Your’re explaining this all wrong!" at any point but they won’t be able to say that I’m wrong in the results. I may not know some terminology or exactly how glucose is broken down but I’m merely going to explain to you what I’ve learned right or wrong. This is your one and only disclaimer. What you read here is ‘USE AT YOUR OWN RISK’ however, it is also so much based on common sense that you should be able to stand back and realize it just works.
Ok, Your body burns calories much like a car burns fuel. If you take in less calories in your daily dietary intake, then it will burn off calories that your body is storing in other forms… Such as fats????? There we go. Ok, good luck Bye now….
Just kidding. You do have to be careful. The safe average that I’ve found in weight lost during a week is about 2lbs. Much more than that and your body can go into starvation mode. Once this happens your metabolism slows down to conserve. (which is a bad thing for dieters.) Also you need to worry about your body beginning to burn away muscle instead of fat. In my ‘country boy’ ignorance I’ll have to say I don’t scientifically know why it switches to muscle but so long as I avoid it, I can spend time learning that as I go.
Lets break this down using my numbers: My BMR is almost 1800 calories a day. BMR is your Basal Metabolic Rate. This is the amount of calories your body will burn if you laid in bed all day and did not do a single thing. The amount of calories needed to sustain bodily functions such as heart rates, breathing, etc. If you have a desk job like myself and are generally pretty ‘sedentary’ throughout the day you can probably add about 600 calories to your BMR as the small amount you’ll burn just moving about doing your daily tasks. This puts my average unassisted calorie burn at about 2400. People who are more active may burn upwards of 3000 or more not counting excercise.
The average calculated amount of calories per 1lb of mass is about 3500. I say that to say this. In order to lose 1lb. a week without excercise would be to average -500 calories from your total amount burned a day. So if my normal burn rate is 2400 (BMR+activities) then assuming I only intake 1900 calories a day…. after 7 days (7 x -500) I would be -3500 for the week thus losing a lb a week. Make sense? 2lbs would take me to a daily intake of 1400 a day. You need to be careful. If you’re a smaller person in general then your total (BMR+activities) may only be 1600 a day and you cannot afford a deficit more than -500 a day. Your body needs more than 1000 to 1100 calories a day. (again, I am no nutricianalist and my numbers as far as minimums needed safely may be off a bit.) Any less than that and you risk starvation mode. Intake of less than that here and there is not a major ordeal but a crash diet of sustained daily calorie intake of less than minimum is dangerous.
I will just leave you with that for now. Feel free to chew on it and throw information my way. I am not inviting any flaming posts about this and that but good helpful insight to things I may have wrong or have missed is appreciated.
- JasonTags: diet, calories, nutrician, BMR
I started a post about a subject that I figured would be touchy. I gave an example of something to lead into it and turned this entire post into the beast you find below. So I’ve now rewritten the intro to this series of sentences and will just let you fall directly into the mess below. I will address the original topic later to anyone that feels they still can return.
Healthcare: Although I like the concept of public healthcare for everyone just because they are born and live here in the United States, I cannot agree that there is a way to do it that doesn’t make things worse on the support side of that spectrum. I am a firm believer in you should earn what you get and other than gifts out of love, charity, or kindness along the way… no one should get a free ride. This isn’t a system that I decided to believe DUE to the debate of public healthcare but one that I had for all aspects of life that I apply to the debate. I don’t believe one group of persons should pay the way for everyone else. I think that when you punish success by slipping the bill to those that have busted their humps to get what they earn that eventually the Socialism cycle starts generating less and less productive people for two main reasons. 1) Why work so hard to have a larger than fair chunk taken away and given to others. And. 2) Why work so hard when there are other people that will take care of me. This isn’t something that happens immediately but over long periods of time and generations.
A good example of #2 is for a lot of the persons that REMAIN on Welfare. Now before you close this window and cuss my name in vain, let me finish this thought. Welfare was designed as a good program and in a lot of ways still IS a good program. There are A LOT of people that I know that either currently use the assistance or have had to at some point. I will say however that the majority of the people I have in my life, whether family or friend, are also people that use/d Welfare for EXACTLY what it was designed for. TEMPORARY ASSISTANCE. Not a PERMANENT supplement to their income because they don’t want to work harder, make sacrifices, or do anything in addition to improve their situation.
With that said about the people that abuse the system and drain the pocketbook that could easily help others let me go further into ticking these people off. I think there are a lot of drugs that should be legalized. I said that to say this, I don’t have a problem with most drugs and I’m not a die hard anti drug zealot that preaches to people that may smoke weed or whatever. I personally don’t do them but don’t really care if others do. I’ve been around a lot of it most of my life and in my opinion most of them are no worse than alcohol. Now, again, I said all of that to say this…. I think that in order to qualify for welfare, ALL persons above the age of 18 in the household should be drug tested. Any positive results…. results in suspension of the PRIVILEGE. It is a privilege NOT a right.
Mad at me yet? No? Well then let me continue….
There is one level of Socialized medicine that I do agree with. I think any persons under the age of 25 that is enrolled into school should still retain an assisted healthcare option. After growing up and the time comes for people to put on their big boy pants, I think it is a person’s responsibility to provide for theirself.
I didn’t have anything handed to me nor did I have a free ride when it came to education or a golden job with kick ass benefits. I worked retail jobs, customer service jobs, construction jobs, etc and along the way there were times I didn’t have insurance and other times that I had some kind of insurance that at least helped. I got a job where I am now and ended up with some pretty good benefits and have busted my ass to get where I am with this company. I didn’t expect anyone to help me along the way nor did I ask for help. Not having things like insurance or money for finer things only pushed me to work harder… not whine and complain about what I didnt have. I’m afraid our society as a whole spends more time whining about what they dont get for free and how unfair it is that someone has something they dont as opposed to working harder to get where the other person is. The American Dream never was about getting all kinds of awesome things… it was about having the opportunity to work harder and to get your dreams to come true…. I don’t understand where this ideal of ‘being owed something’ came from but its growing out of control. No one in this country or world rather is owed anything… except opportunity to work for what they want in life.
Grow up America!
So, I’ve not really felt very creative lately. I could easily say that I haven’t been feeling creative for a long time but most of the missing timeline for this blog has been do to being busy. Since things have slowed up I had expected to spend more time on here and thats where the lack of creativity has come in.
Without having any real topics to want to write about nor any quick witted knowledge to entertain anyone with, I’ve not felt led to write about just nothing at all. Well, I’ve now decided to do just that. Here is an entry with a blathering of blabbity-blah just so I can attempt to get my writer’s block to fall to my feet.
Just like with anything else in life, the longer I stay away from something, the less I tend to want to be involved with it. Take World of Warcraft for example. I, like many others got pretty ‘into’ that game for years along with friends and such but would get busy from time to time with other interests or time consuming projects. The longer I stayed away from WoW, the less I craved to play and with that the vicious cycle began. Without as much interest pulling me to play I was easily distracted by even more side items and projects. The more time that passed without me logging in…. the less I even thought about the game until finally I would realize I have paid for access to a game for months and have not even thought about the game one single time. It gets worse and worse as each day goes by and there really is no fix for it. I would however from time to time decide to play and when something major like an expansion would come out, I would get hot and heavy for a couple weeks and realize I had missed the game and the friendships I had within it’s digital playground. Something would inevitably strike my attention span in half and even faster than before I would forget about the game and lose interest. Each time the cycle restarts, less time was needed before I completely became uninterested.
I’ve found that this also applies to other things in my life. This blog has suffered because of it, my photography blog has suffered due to it as well. Sometimes I would spend way too much time on Facebook only to spend weeks barely paying it any attention. The latter of this list has more impact than the others. I use Facebook to keep tabs on friends like anyone else but with the majority of my family being out of state, it is the lifeline that I have to most of my kinfolk. I need to find a balance with all of these things. I think one of the more prominant issues in me losing desire for stuff so easily is that I think I put so much into the things I get involved in, that I tend to get burnt out. With some balance I can keep myself from burning out and step away more frequently but for less time before I return. If I’m not burnt out, then I wouldnt try to subconciously find substitutes for my time.
I guess I could go into detail of non technological areas in my life in which this would/could apply but I wouldn’t want to bother anyone else with any of that nonsense.
So, is this just me or is there anyone else out there in which this cycle tends to run rampid throughout their normal daily, weekly, or monthly routines?
- Jason
Last year I decided to purchase an iPad in order to assist in being able to keep a portable photograph portfolio with me at all times. It was light, displays photographs on an outrageously beautiful screen, and I can keep a very large number of photographs on it at any given time to show to potential clients. I’ve so far been able to take advantage of this purchase for that very reason, multiple times. I only expect it’s original use to expand as the photography business expands. With that said, I also became more and more familiar with the iOS that runs on the iPad and the more comfortable I am with something, the more I like it.
I decided when the time was right to upgrade my blackberry I would switch to an Android. I had a couple I decided I liked that AT&T would offer only to find that each time they released a phone they either crippled it down with their own ‘crap-ware’ or restricted certain options from it. I eventually found one that there was rumor of and waited and waited and waited to see how they would butcher it when it was released. It was supposed to be released Q4 of 2010 and by the end of December I had given up. I have other reasons I slowly had decided against Android OS but the slow rollout and timeline tardiness was more than I could stand.
With Q4 coming to an end and having enjoyed my iOS experience with the iPad I decided to start shopping the iPhone. After tinkering with it in a local AT&T store and after wheeling and dealing with the girl that works there they approved all of my requests and I decided this was what I was going to go with. I purchased the iPhone and after a month or more… I am more than happy with it and it’s very few limitations.
After having fun with the iPhone and iPad for several months I decided I may be interested in taking it to the next level. So after some investigation I began to look into what it would take to develop applications for iOS and found out that (Suprise!) it requires MacOS.
I’ve been toying with the idea for a long time about getting a Mac. Getting into the photography again only intensified that desire and now there was an additional reason. As a Tech Guy I am always learning the different techonologies. I’ve gone the Microsoft route, the Linux route, the scripting routes… I have however never learned my way around MacOS… again… another reason to invest.
So as of Mid January… I am the proud owner of a MacBook Pro. Before anyone gets some idea that I’ve joined the Mac snop legion. I still do not think any one OS is better than the others. Linux has it’s strengths. Windows has come a long way and I now have confidence in their OS from both a personal and an enterprise point of views. Macs have their great points and I’ve already learned some downsides. (To be pointed out later)
I definately see what all the hub-bub is about. The OS is definately sleek and beautiful. It’s ease of use is also a thing to mention. From a very advanced user’s point of view… it’s probably harder to get used to MacOS than for your average Joe-User.
With all of that said…..
Peace.
- Jason
My apologies for being gone so long. Life has definately kept me busy in my absence. I’ve taken over new applications at work and that alone has taken any kind of freedom to think about anything else but work during the daylight hours. The photography business went through it’s busy time then backed off during the fall/winter but I’m expecting it to pick up again as we approach the spring/summer months.
We’ve seen our country politically go to hell then eventually quiet down a small bit. ObamaCare was passed against majority favor and in November a numerous number of Democrats lost their seats in areas they’d held for decades. The people are speaking out loudly and hopefully they wont forget come next election. The new House members that rode the ‘We will repeal ObamaCare’ wagon have already voted and passed a repeal in the house but things look grim in the Senate. They are expecting it to die in the Senate or to quickly get voted down. If by God’s mercy it does pass the Senate, Obama has already confirmed he would veto it. All is not lost at that point but it becomes more and more work at that point.
A lot more to talk about but we’ll do it little by little over time.
Take care….
- Jason
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